Consequentialism

One

Some Actions are Always Wrong

The first principle of being a good person is that we must always do good and avoid evil. No intention or situation can justify doing evil because evil only results in more evil. Evil never results in good. 

A good act requires the goodness of the object (what you are doing), the intention (why you are doing it), and circumstances. All three must be good for the action to be good.

The Catholic Church teaches that some kinds of actions like blasphemy, adultery, abortion, contraception, lying, and killing innocent people, are always wrong, no matter what. It teaches that some things you can never morally do. It teaches that a good end doesn’t justify a bad action. 

Unfortunately, it’s very common for people to think that just about anything can be done in certain situations. If it’s a matter of life and death, or if it’s about saving the innocent, or if it’s about saving a large group of people by doing something reprehensible to just a few people.

The idea that the ends justify the means is called “consequentialism.” This is the false idea that an action is considered morally good if it leads to a good outcome and bad if it leads to a bad outcome and no action is bad if it brings about greater good “overall.”

The Catholic Church rejects this by teaching that certain actions are intrinsically evil regardless of intentions or outcomes. 

Two

Consequentialism

Consequentialism basically says that any kind of action can be morally right in a particular set of circumstances.

For instance, a consequentialist would say that slowly torturing an infant to death would be morally permissible if it prevented a mad scientist from destroying the world.

For a consequentialist, what matters is that the good consequences of your action end up outweighing the bad consequences. It’s consequentialism that’s so often behind euthanasia or abortion. Consequentialism is what people use to justify sweatshops. It’s what dictators use to justify ethnic cleansing, and what terrorists use to justify their terrorism.

Consequentialists always justify their acts in terms of overall benefits, or long-term benefits. And in the process, they attack and destroy human goodness.

Three

Attacking Human Goodness is the Definition of Moral Evil

The main problem with consequentialism is that it doesn’t really have a clear definition of what it means by moral evil.

What is moral evil?

The basic meaning of moral evil is just what goes against human goodness. This is a natural definition of moral evil, but it’s also a Christian definition of moral evil. That’s why St. Thomas Aquinas says, “God is not offended by us except when we act against our own good.”

So by definition, it can never be right to attack human goodness. To attack human integrity, human purity, or innocent human life. To say that it’s sometimes right to attack human goodness is like saying that sometimes circles are square. It’s absurd. Which is why consequentialism is absurd. And why it leads to such tragic results.

Four

Can’t Calculate All the Consequences

Here’s the other major flaw of consequentialism: it acts as though it’s possible to compare all the different outcomes of two actions. 

But of course, it isn’t, at least not for mortal men. An action may have consequences which stretch out indefinitely, changing the world in long-term ways we can’t fathom now. 

Almost every time-travel movie points this out. The plot usually revolves around somebody making a seemingly small decision in the past that incalculably changes the future. So how are you supposed to measure an indefinite string of consequences, and then compare it with another indefinite string of consequences? You’ll be calculating forever! Better just to do good and avoid evil altogether.

Five

Do Good, Avoid Evil

There are two basic rules: one for our intellect and one for our will. The most basic rule of our intellect is don’t contradict yourself. This is also called the law of non-contradiction. It keeps us from thinking and talking nonsense. But the most basic rule of the will is this: Do good, and avoid evil.

This is the fundamental principle of all morality: Work to make the human person flourish. Don’t attack human goodness. Don’t attack human flourishing. Whatever your motive, whatever your situation. That’s the basic law that consequentialism gets wrong. And it’s the basic law the Church gets right.